one where they found a broad-bosomed woman with a
brood of tow-headed children. Her husband was out after supplies--a
week's journey. She kept Hazel from her bed till after midnight,
talking. They had been there over winter, and Hazel Wagstaff was the
first white woman she had bespoken in seven months. There were other
women in the valley farther along; but fifty or sixty miles leaves
scant opportunity for visiting when there is so much work to be done
ere wild acres will feed hungry mouths.

At length they fared into Hazleton, which is the hub of a vast area
over which men pursue gold and furs. Some hundred odd souls were
gathered there, where the stern-wheel steamers that ply the turgid
Skeena reach the head of navigation. A land-recording office and a
mining recorder Hazleton boasted as proof of its civic importance. The
mining recorder, who combined in himself many capacities besides his
governmental function, undertook to put through Bill's land deal. He
knew Bill Wagstaff.

"Wise man," he nodded, over the description. "If some more uh these
boys that have blazed trails through this country would do the same
thing, they'd be better off. A chunk of land anywhere in this country
is a good bet now. We'll have rails here from the coast in a year.
Better freeze onto a couple uh lots here in Hazleton, while they're
low. Be plumb to the skies in ten years. Natural place for a city,
Bill. It's astonishin' how the settlers is comin'."

There was ocular evidence of this last, for they had followed in a road
well rutted from loaded wagons. But Bill invested in no real estate,
notwithstanding the positive assurance that Hazleton was on the ragged
edge of a boom.

"Maybe, maybe," he admitted. "But I've got other fish to fry. That
one piece up by Pine River will do me for a while."

Here where folk talked only of gold and pelts and railroads and
settlement and the coming boom that would make them all rich, Bill
Wagstaff added two more ponies to his pack train. These he loaded down
with food, staples only, flour, sugar, beans, salt, tea and coffee, and
a sack of dried fruit. Also he bestowed upon Nigger a further burden
of six dozen steel traps. And in the cool of a midsummer morning,
before Hazleton had rubbed the sleep out of its collective eyes and
taken up the day's work of discussing its future greatness, Roaring
Bill and his wife draped the mosquito nets over their heads and turned
their faces nort